


With Unspoken Accord

by Katherine



Category: Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 04:37:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4465712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katherine/pseuds/Katherine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they woke to the sunrise together in the Companions' Field after their third unconsummated tryst, Talia and Skif did not give up on being more than friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Unspoken Accord

**Author's Note:**

  * For [straightforwardly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/straightforwardly/gifts).



When they woke to the sunrise together in the Companions' Field after their third unconsummated tryst, Talia and Skif did not give up on being more than friends. Skif touched Talia's hair, his hand wet from the dew, as she sat up and turned towards him. "If you want to—" he began with an uncertain breath out, but fell to silence accompanied by a smile when Talia said she was determined to keep trying.

The awkward fact remained that neither of them had much time to spare from their lessons. Talia had the intensity of being Queen's Own as the learning she shared with her year-mates. Skif remained determined not to have another mark against him in the Book.

In public, the most that was visible between them was a touch of hands when passing a platter at mealtimes, or a whisper in a shared class. (Nor did they do that much in all classes; Talia wouldn't have dared in front of Alberich.) The joking they experienced was gentle (Herald trainees having expectations of how to behave) and, Talia reflected, a price of living all together in the Collegium.

She did not usually join Skif in his room, although he of course could slip easily into hers. During one of those early visits Talia watched as Skif worked oil (privately asked from Mero, she suspected) onto the hinges of her door. Skif was watching her in return, she was certain, for all that he appeared to be focused on his task.

When he turned to her, silently taking the few steps that brought him up to her bed, he was smiling, that soft, genuine smile that she knew few ever saw. He extended his hand towards her, his fingers faintly gleaming from the oil, and made a joke about the characteristics of a thief’s fingers. That time, she was close enough to her Holderkin upbringing still to blush.

Later, she found the ease to laugh at such words.

* * *

There were the hours they spent together in a tucked-away corner of the Companions' Field. Rolan rarely joined them: Talia usually received an unspecified sense of things-to-do-elsewhere from him. But Cymry did, often. Skif usually set himself in an easy seated position next to his Companion, her white leg along his side. "Protecting me from all the greenery," Skif half-joked, reminding Talia that he was a child of the city.

Talia herself liked the quiet surroundings, the plants she didn't need to tend or keep sheep away from. Silly sheep, the song called them, and every year there'd be at least one lamb attracted to eat something poisonous. If there was any poisonous plant allowed to grow in the Field, which struck her as vanishingly unlikely, a Companion would have more than sense enough to avoid it.

Sometimes, as she and Skif talked, Skif would hand her a few loose hairs from Cymry's tail, and Talia would braid them, making the small task slow so that she would have something to do with her hands.

After one of his glancing mentions of his childhood on the streets, Skif said "I like that you don't go asking." When he added, "I'm sure you're a good Queen's Own, listening as you do," Talia looked down at the white braid in her fingers. While hearing herself praised left Talia shy, she could not deny the sense of having _helped_ she felt with Selenay. Yet listening and not-asking, Skif proceeded to explain, weren't the same, and he appreciated the latter.

"It's not that I don't make stories of it," he said. Talia twined the Companion-hair braid around one of her hands and touched Skif's leg with the other. She knew, and had confirmed by the wash of emotion from him, that she meant his past. "You'd make songs, if you were a Bard," she said. "That doesn't mean you should have to. Not with me."

* * *

There was also the looming fact that Skif was not one of her year-mates, and would complete his lessons and be assigned to his internship. That would be a year long at least. She considered writing to him, but then there would have been the fuss and uncertainty of finding someone to carry a letter. Also, in truth, she still felt wary of being public about writing. _Flaunting a skill a girl shouldn't have in the first place,_ whispered her Holderkin beginning.

By the time Skif's internship came, that wary feeling was another part of her past that time in the Collegium had quieted for her. So, there were letters and messages to keep some connection. Nonetheless, Talia missed Skif. His humour. The way he laughed in the dark with her. The soft, acknowledging touch of his hand on her hair, shifting a curl back into place.

* * *

They had next to no time between his return and Talia being sent on her own internship. At the surprise party her friends had arranged for her, Skif maneuvered to sit near her.

As the party begun to wind down, Skif elected to be loud about accompanying Talia back to her room, rather than trying to slip out and likely occasion comment. "We're breaking up this party so you can sleep before your internship," he declared. "Not spend the night in the library looking up your sector, or in the Field keeping Rolan company."

As Talia led the way up the stairs to her new room at the top of the tower, Skif took three steps fast to come beside her, and whispered playfully, "So that's why you cured me of those storm nightmares. Else I wouldn't be climbing right up here for you."

As she stepped around her carefully-filled packs towards the bed, Talia mentioned, "Rolan wouldn't have wanted my company. He's—well, I think he wants to come back from the sector to foals here, I'll say it that way."

Skif winked at her, far from unfamiliar with what Talia had told him of Rolan's moods and inadvertent sharings of experience.

* * *

On Talia's internship, messages could only be infrequent, as she and Kris were in one of the northernmost sectors with each village seemingly farther from the previous. Adding to that the month the two of them endured snowed in...

Having had no notion who the summer Courier-Herald sent to them would be spared Talia specific worries. If Talia had known the summer Courier-Herald sent to them was going to be Skif, she might have worried. But there was no awkwardness evident; Skif could be charming when he saw reason to, and settled into telling wry stories for her and Kris.

When she left the Waystation suddenly in the middle of one of those stories, she had walked only a little way when Skif came up beside her. He must have left Kris without the end of the story, to have joined her that quickly.

"Rolan and Cymry," Talia said by way of brief explanation. Skif shook his head, told her quietly, "I should have realised they'd be—and me with a bedroll on the floor here."

Talia sensed a braid of uncertainty and hope in his emotions, and leaned in to kiss him.

* * *

Months still of learning, firming up her understanding of herself as a full Herald, and re-training to exert more control over her Gift. Then, at last, home to the Collegium and the intrigues of the court. She had her duties to resume, research to do on Elspeth's concerns, several friends to catch up with or most likely be caught for gossip and reporting by, not to mention the mundane necessity of unpacking... but first, Talia slipped out to the Companions' Field to find Skif with Cymry and the foal.

"I wish we could have been back sooner," Talia said. "I'd have sat foal-watch with you. If Cymry wanted me there," she added hastily, looking at the Companion. Cymry lowered her long head in a nod, as Rolan exaggeratedly did towards Talia at times.

Skif was smiling. "She would have," he said. "I would have. I do—want you with me, Talia." His smile went more crooked, and a laughed a little, a visible self-consciousness that was unlike his usual confident manner. "As much as Heralds get to be with anyone!"

"When you're not galloping with messages," Talia answered. "Or we're both uncovering plots."

"The time we're not busy saving Valdemar, then," Skif said. His bow was dramatic, but Talia could feel how sincere his emotions were under the outward style.


End file.
